Crime Short Story: Double Trouble

CRIME SHORT STORY BY VAL BONSALL

In this crime short story, set in 1973, With two clients claiming to be married to the same man, Chrissie and Glyn had their work cut out…

Chrissie noted the new client looking round the office as she showed the woman out.

It was, she knew, very old-fashioned.

I mean, it’s 1973, she thought, and here’s me still using a manual typewriter!

But Glyn said people consulting a private detective wanted something traditional.

“It makes them feel more secure, and they come here with problems, Chrissie.”

Certainly this poor woman had a problem. Chrissie felt sincerely sorry for her.

“So you will help me?” she asked Chrissie, rocking the baby she was carrying, who’d started to cry.

“We will do our utmost,” Chrissie assured her.

Glyn, who’d been out seeing another new client, came bounding back into the office just after the woman and child had left.

“Who was that?” he asked. “Had she been in here?”

“Yes,” Chrissie said. “I tried to get her to wait to see you but she said she was taking her little girl to a hospital appointment.

“Also, she wants us to get on with it right away, so I spoke to her and took down all the details.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “So what does she want?”

It’s her husband. She thinks he’s having an affair and wants us to follow him.

“What about the one you’ve been to see?” she added as she reached for the little plastic box of index cards, complete with alphabetic dividers.

When she’d arrived, just as a temp for a week, there had been no systems whatsoever in the office, and it had been chaos.

Halfway through the first day, she’d had enough and had phoned the agency.

“Please get me out of here before I go mad!” she’d beseeched them.

But they’d dithered about and she’d ended up doing the full week.

Somehow, come the Friday, Chrissie had ended up accepting the job Glyn offered her!

What had possessed her, she wasn’t quite sure. Certainly it was not her intention to stay for ever.

Meanwhile, to try to make life easier for herself, she’d started to install basic systems, including immediately filling out a card with their full contact details for new clients.

“What did the new client I saw want?” He repeated her question.

“Same as yours, actually. She suspects her husband is seeing someone else.”

Chrissie shook her head disapprovingly.

“What’s your woman’s name?” she asked, pen in her hand.

“Elaine Brown,” he said.

“What a coincidence,” Chrissie said. “Mine’s a Brown, too – Sandy Brown.

“I’ll put the first names in red, so they stand out and don’t get mixed up –”

She broke off, seeing the frown on Glyn’s face.

She knew he was the same as all the detectives she’d ever read about or watched on telly – he didn’t like the word “coincidence”.

“What’s the name of your woman’s husband?” he asked.

“Percy Brown. What’s yours?”

“Er . . . Percy Brown,” he said.

Glyn got out the notes he’d taken at his recent meeting.

“He works at that distribution centre beside the bridge.”

“So does mine,” Chrissie said.

Both women had provided a photo of the person they wanted to have followed.

“It’s the same guy!” Chrissie yelled when they compared them. “This is beyond being a two-timing rat – it’s bigamy! What are we going to do?”

Glyn shook his head.

“I don’t know. I’ve never had anything like this before.” He struck what she referred to as his “the Thinker” pose.

“I suggest we first try to confirm our suspicions.

“Give me your woman’s address,” he added, “and anything else you’ve got and I’ll go to the library and see what I can find in the public records.”

Chrissie handed over her notes but didn’t offer to accompany him.

She knew the woman in the reference library was rather smitten with Glyn and would, with great efficiency, do all the looking up for him.

He was back within the hour with the news that it seemed both women had given false names – or at least, the surname.

“There is an Elaine living at the address she provided, and a Sandy living at the address she did. But not an Elaine or a Sandy Brown.

“Nor is there a Percy Brown resident at either address.”

He proceeded with more information as Chrissie tried to make sense of the situation.

“But what are they after?” she asked.

“I don’t know – not yet,” he said.

Chrissie suspected he was quite enjoying himself. She knew he liked puzzles.

“One thing we do already know,” he resumed,

is that the one is not aware that the other has also contacted us.

“Yes,” she agreed. “If, say, Elaine knew Sandy was coming here, Elaine certainly wouldn’t have, too – in case we sussed them.”

“Also,” Glyn continued, “although we now know the story they each gave us for wanting this Percy person followed is a fabrication, they nonetheless must both have some reason for their interest in him.”

“Isn’t it strange they both used the straying husband story?” Chrissie asked.

“No.” Glyn shook his head.

“It’s an easy reply, isn’t it, when asked why you want someone followed?”

“I suppose so.”

“Before this . . . er . . . complication,” Glyn resumed, “it was my intention to start by following Percy when he leaves work today.”

He looked at his watch.

“Let’s do that and see what comes of it.”

“That’s the baby there, in that pushchair!” Chrissie whispered to Glyn as they got out of his Ford Capri.

There hadn’t been any available parking near where Percy worked so they’d ended up behind a nearby shopping precinct.

“Baby?” Glyn asked, looking in the direction in which she was pointing.

“Yes, my Mrs Brown had her baby girl with her when she came into the office . . . or at least, what she said was her baby girl.”

The woman in charge of the pushchair was definitely not the woman to whom Chrissie had spoken earlier.

And another woman was now greeting her in friendly manner.

“How’s little Amy doing?” she said.

“Goodness, she’s so like you. Of course, being a girl, it’s better her taking after you rather than her dad!”

The woman now identified as the child’s real mother laughed.

“Your hair looks nice,” the other woman went on.

“I had it done this morning,” Amy’s mum said.

“I was saying it looked a mess to a neighbour and she kindly offered to babysit for me while I went to the hairdresser.”

Chrissie felt hurt. Cheated.

“I should have insisted she waited till you came back,” she said to Glyn.

“You might have seen through her.”

“Don’t count on it,” he said. “Remember, I was conned, too. My Mrs Brown isn’t married to Percy Brown, either!”

“Bringing someone else’s baby, though.”

“To get your sympathy, Chrissie, and make sure you acted immediately – you said that was important to her.”

By now they’d walked the short distance to where Percy Brown, whoever he was, worked.

“Anyway,” Glyn said, “here he is coming out – the man of such great interest to them both.”

Chrissie followed Glyn’s cue with regard to the right distance to keep behind him.

You couldn’t have your target knowing you were there. Equally, you didn’t want to lose them.

“What if he gets in a car?” Chrissie asked.

“I checked that with Mrs Brown,” Glyn said, “and he doesn’t use one for work.”

He did get on a bus.

So they did, too, paying to the terminus, though in fact he got off just a couple of stops along.

They followed him to a large old building.

It looked to Chrissie as though someone lived there, but it was more an industrial than a residential area and certainly didn’t look homely.

“Aha!” Glyn said.

“Aha what?”

“I’ve been here before,” he said, signalling to her to join him behind a nearby parked van.

“A guy called Leo lives there,” he said to her as, from their hiding place, they watched Percy entering the building.

“How do you know him?”

“From an investigation. He deals in stolen property.”

“A fence, you mean.”

Since starting to work for Glyn, Chrissie’s vocabulary had widened considerably – even her father had commented on it.

“Yes,” Glyn continued, “but I’d heard that he’d retired from that particular branch of his scurrilous activities.”

He frowned.

“You stay here,” he said, “and I’ll go and look for a window –”

He broke off as the door opened again and Percy emerged with a man who Glyn whispered was Leo.

Leo accompanied Percy on to the street and they shook hands.

“No skin off my nose, mate,” Leo was saying, “you having the lion’s share. You took the biggest risk – as we men always do.

“But do the women appreciate it?” he added bitterly. “Nah. Betray you soon as look at you.”

When Percy had departed and Leo had gone back inside, they, too, made tracks.

“He doesn’t seem to think much of women,” Chrissie remarked as they walked back to the car.

“Maybe there’s somewhere we can glean more info before packing in for the day,” Glyn said.

“The Globe,” she guessed.

The Globe was probably the worst pub in town.

Its varied clientele often included those who would sometimes provide useful information to someone in Glyn’s line of business.

Chrissie had never set foot in the place prior to her association with him – another way in which her life had been widened, she thought wryly.

It had contracted in other ways, though.

The unpredictable hours played havoc with her social life.

Really, she would have to find herself another job.

But as it happened, that particular day, they didn’t have to go into the Globe because they saw Shifty, hurrying home from his work, on the way.

As a younger man, Shifty had, very briefly, pursued a life of petty crime.

But, all credit to him, he’d put it far behind him and was working again in his original trade as a joiner.

He still heard things, though, and was often useful to Glyn.

“The fence, Leo,” Glyn prompted him.

“Any news on him? I thought he’d packed in,
but . . .”

“I’ll see what I can find out,” Shifty said.

Chrissie didn’t know when it had been formed. But she recognised there was a strong bond between the pair.

The next day Shifty turned up at the office first thing.

“You were right that Leo was lying low,” he told them. “His ex-girlfriend shopped him.

“But he managed to wriggle out of it, like he does,” he continued, “and the word is he’s active again now.

“An opportunity came along that he considered he could do well from.”

“How’s that?” Glyn asked.

“He was approached by some total amateurs who he reckons he can squeeze a good commission from.

They think they’re master criminals, apparently, but Leo says they’re not even a proper team.

“They don’t trust each other,” Shifty concluded, “which is absolutely vital, Leo says, so he’s looking for buyers for them but told them to keep the stuff until he’s sorted it.”

“How many are they, these characters who approached him?” Glyn asked.

“Three,” Shifty replied before hurrying off. “There’s three of ’em. One guy and a couple of girls.”

“That’s them, isn’t it?” Chrissie said to Glyn. “The two Mrs Browns and
Mr Brown.”

“Yes. From what we overheard, Percy’s after more than his share of the proceeds and Leo’s agreed to conspire with him to get it.”

“What Shifty said about Leo’s ex-girlfriend shopping him . . .” Chrissie said.

“That explains his remark about women betraying you as soon as look at you.”

“That’s right. He would appear to be off women at present so that would help Percy, since it’s two women he’s trying to defraud.

“But the women,” he added, “have clearly become suspicious somewhere along the line, and so instructed us to follow Percy.”

“What do you imagine it is they’ve stolen?” Chrissie asked.

But before Glyn replied, she knew the answer.

Percy’s place of work, from which they’d followed him, was the warehouse for a big electrical goods firm. Colour televisions, stereos – all sorts of things.

“Do you reckon the women work there, too?” she asked.

“It’s a good guess.”

They looked again through the notes each of them had taken.

Neither woman had named her employer.

“But it seems they gave us their correct first names,” Glyn said.

“So you phone yours up there, just asking for her by her first name, then I’ll do mine and we’ll see if we recognise their voices.”

“What do we say to them?”

“Oh, anything. Just pretend we’re telephonists from another firm, trying to put a call through to them, then hang up.”

“Yes, the woman I’ve just spoken to is the one who came here,” Chrissie said a few minutes later as she now passed the phone to Glyn.

“Mine’s there, too,” he was soon able to confirm.

“Mine answered the phone saying, ‘Accounts department’,” Chrissie said.

“Mine said, ‘Stock control department’, Glyn said.

“Let’s phone and ask for Percy now and see what he says when he answers . . .”

“He’s apparently in the loading bay,” Glyn told her as he replaced the phone again.

“So it’s pretty obvious what’s going on.”

“Yes.” Chrissie nodded, “Sandy and Elaine fiddle the paperwork to enable Percy to . . .”

She paused, trying to think of the right word.

“To enable Percy to thieve some of the stock,” Glyn said.

“What now?” Chrissie asked.

“My immediate thought,” he said, “was just to tell Sandy and Elaine we don’t believe the story they gave us and don’t want to act for them.

“But we can’t just ignore what they’re doing,” he continued.

“Apart from anything else, to do so would be to encourage them to carry on in the same way and get deeper into what are very murky waters.

“Trust me, they’d soon regret becoming mixed up with the likes of Leo,” he concluded grimly.

“Go to the police?” she suggested. “Or maybe just their boss?”

“Probably the latter,” he said, after a pause, “and they can go to the police if that’s what they want to do.”

“Unless the boss is in on it, too?” The thought suddenly occurred to Chrissie.

“I’ll tread carefully,” Glyn said, reaching again for the phone and asking to speak to the MD of the firm.

It was a long conversation.

“As I suspected, they had already noticed things were going missing,” Glyn told Chrissie when he eventually hung up, “and were increasing their security.

“So likely the game would soon have been up for them anyway,” he added.

“But he greatly appreciated my call, he said.”

Next day when she arrived at the office – a little late, having been to the café across the road for some toast because their own aged toaster had packed in – Glyn was showing out a very smartly dressed man.

“The bigwig at the firm I spoke to yesterday,” Glyn said.

“He came to tell us that, when confronted, all three confessed.

“They also named Leo and the police have been informed,” he added, looking pleased.

Then he frowned.

“I don’t like Leo one bit, and am reluctant to credit him with anything.

“But he was right that they weren’t a team – that they totally lacked trust in each other.

Apparently when questioned they each tried to load the blame on to the others.

“Well, the women were justified in not trusting Percy,” Chrissie said. “He was plotting to trick them.”

“Indeed. But there was no trust between the two women, either.

“Which is why, when they separately came to suspect Percy’s plan, they each came to us rather than speaking to each other.

“Anyway,” Glyn continued with a smile, “our friend who’s just left brought us some tokens of his firm’s appreciation for our help.”

He pointed.

On top of his auntie Daphne’s old sideboard which they used for storage was a trendy-looking clock radio, some kind of recording machine and a big four-slice electric toaster!

And on her desk . . .

“Oh, my goodness – heated rollers!”

She was delighted.

“I was pondering buying some,” she said, looking round for somewhere to plug them in right away.

“Ooh, I’ll be able to curl my hair – tidy it up!”

It might look more efficient, she thought, for the interviews she’d be attending for that new job she was determined to find.

“Chrissie, your hair’s perfect as it is,” Glyn said, still smiling, but differently.

She thought about his words, and the look on his face, when she was updating her index cards later in the afternoon.

First task: remove the two fake Mrs Browns!

They were helping, the new procedures she was introducing, she was sure.

So wouldn’t it be a shame to halt the process now?

Whoever replaced her might just let it all slip back into the old chaos.